


When Dreams Do Show Thee Me

by nonelvis



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:13:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonelvis/pseuds/nonelvis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The spying has to stop. It's beneath him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Dreams Do Show Thee Me

**Author's Note:**

> A year and a half ago, I started a post-"Amy's Choice" fic and then completely forgot about it. But after finding it again recently, I thought it was worth finishing, even if it is incredibly late.

The spying has to stop. It's beneath him.

A man tells himself something for hundreds of years, he expects it to sink in eventually. Rules like _don't fall in love with them,_ one he continues to break no matter how many times it breaks him. _Don't let them fall in love with you,_ another one honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

_Don't eavesdrop on their most private moments, even if you're a telepath living in a telepathic ship._

(In his defence, his human companions don't know the first thing about erecting mental barriers, so it's his responsibility to block things out himself.)

(This would be a more convincing defence if he bothered to keep up those barriers, but they take effort, and there's always a rectifier needing recalibration, or an extraordinarily vital rewiring project.)

It seems a small, unimportant rule compared to the others. Except when it means one of the others might end up broken.

* * *

Amy rises above him, purple fingernails scratching pink trails along the Doctor's bare chest, and his hips buck in response. Hands lashed to the rails of the headboard with a pinstriped scarf, his head arching backwards in pleasure as Amy rocks back and forth. Russet hair cascading over his shoulders when she drops down to kiss him, and her tongue is strangely cool in his mouth – no, wait, that's not right; _his_ tongue is cool, and when Amy pulls back, he sees himself lift his head, chasing her lips. He's right where he shouldn't be, along for the wild ride in Amy's head, her dream prising open the cracks in his mind he always forgets to close.

Amy's thighs clamp tight round his own. Even here in her dream, he can sense the same thing happening while she sleeps, her live body mirroring the actions of her dream self, tension gathering between her legs. Her breath huffs, and in the dream she starts to moan, louder and louder as she moves, and just at the fuzzy boundary where Amy's dream self ends and the Doctor's begins, Amy's impending climax simmers below the surface.

Her nails dig welts into his ribcage when she comes, and the Doctor wakes with stiff hands and a sticky pool on his sheets.

* * *

All the terrible, awful things he's done; all the people who've perished at his hands, directly or indirectly; all the destruction he's wrought; the visiting dead accusing him of his crimes, the lost loved ones whose mere presence taunts him. The cloth of nightmares, every scrap of it.

Yet those aren't the dreams that haunt him. He's learned to lock away that kind of heartache, the kind so big he has to wedge it into a box, pack it in a hidden corner of his mind's dusty attic, and if he's lucky, only a wisp of memory will whisper here and there to torment him. It's the little things, the fears that creep in round the edges, sliding under door cracks and chewing their way through the walls like mice, that rattle him most: the faces of the ones he hasn't yet lost, but knows he will. The faces of the ones to whom he made promises and left broken-hearted. The faces of the ones he loves, but can't tell.

Each dream made worse by its pathetic, niggling _humanity._ A Time Lord should be concerned with observation and preservation, never something so petty as feelings, much less ones about these limited, linear beings.

Sometimes he thinks he's spent far too much time with humans. And sometimes, usually sweaty and shocked awake in the middle of the night, he knows it isn't nearly enough time.

* * *

Poor now-nonexistent Rory had been such a convenient reminder that companions were supposed to be strictly out of bounds, though in practice, the fantasy situation only got worse when Rory arrived, because then Amy started having sex. Lots of sex. Sex the Doctor could have heard even if he and his ship weren't psychically linked, and how unsurprising was it to discover his speculation about Amy being a screamer was correct?

Maybe he'd have found out sooner if he'd kissed her properly after she saved Bracewell, instead of flailing about, desperately trying to find something to do with his hands that wouldn't involve stroking her cheeks, drawing her lips closer. Or if he'd given in fully when she'd launched herself at him later, her body writhing so temptingly against him.

 _Don't let them fall in love with you,_ and she'd said that she wasn't looking for anything long-term, but how much of that was truth, and how much denial? He could plunge in without a plan, as always, or he could learn from past mistakes.

But Rory's quite thoroughly gone, and the opportunities are there _all the bloody time._ Increasingly, he finds himself contemplating them with his fist wrapped around his cock and his mind drifting through the possibilities:

Bringing Amy to prehistoric Earth, where her eyes would widen with wonder at a far-off herd of triceratops grazing in a meadow. Amy's eyelids fluttering shut at the touch of his lips, her moans and sighs for him, her fingers digging furrows in the dirt.

Bending her half-dressed over a console room chair, spanking her bare bottom for her wilfulness, the imprint of his hand flushing pink across her skin. Licking her afterwards until she's come so many times she can no longer stand up.

And once, while he dreams instead of merely fantasising, she's got one gangly giraffe leg propped on his shoulder, and he slides his tongue over her ankle, tasting every deliciously salty curve, tickling her along the arch of her foot. Amy comes, first by his hands, then her own, but the Doctor's left wanting, pushing into her harder but feeling his own release slip further away.

"Come on," says Amy, "you promised me a really good fuck. And you're always late."

 _Always late, always letting them down, always letting them believe he's theirs and theirs alone._ He drops her leg, thrusts frantically at her, softens anyway and then finally, slips out.

He sleeps fitfully after that, dreaming of a rocky shore and the word _forever._

* * *

Amy lounges on her stomach in front of the library fireplace, sketching Vincent's face from memory with a charcoal stub. Firelight twinkles through the strands of her hair, glinting copper-red. She frowns at her drawing, smudges a streak of cheekbone with her thumb.

The Doctor watches her. The fourth edition of _Qrlghz's Treatise on Ninth-Dimensional Philosophical Mathematics_ is open on his lap, but he stopped paying attention to the pages he was turning ten minutes ago, lost in the light flickering across Amy's pale and serious face, and the snide, clipped voice in his head berating him for noticing.

The voice never has any self-doubt. That dissipated years ago. No, it's pure self-loathing: contemptuous, not fearful. _You ancient, pathetic creature. Letting yourself get attached to your pets. Letting them curl up beside you and think they can stay as long as they like, more than friends but less than lovers because you're too terrified of the consequences, and they don't know enough to run from you in the first place._

He could close his book, drop to his knees next to Amy, and she'd let him kiss her, let his lips rove over every part of her body. She would kiss him back, and take him in her mouth, and he'd finally have her, right there, right then in front of the fireplace like some stupid cliché, and it would be _glorious._

His index finger pauses at the cover of the book. A little more pressure is all he needs. Up and over. Snap it shut. His mouth opens to say something, his throat suddenly dry and silent.

Amy yawns and stretches. "Think I'll finish this in the morning," she says, adding, "goodnight, Doctor," punctuated with a too-brief touch of her lips to his forehead before she swishes out of the room.

His finger relaxes against the book's binding. His mouth closes on the whispered word "goodnight."

 _You're always late, old man._ The voice chuckles. _And always your own worst enemy_.

* * *

Hours later, still in the library sulking over his book, the tendrils of Amy's dream wind themselves round him, and multidimensional set theory fades away, replaced by a vision of Amy in her Leadworth bedroom. Half-naked in pink bra and knickers, tumbling on the bed with a shaggy-haired young man. He pushes her underwear down, sliding his hands across the curve of her buttocks, squeezing. A finger dips deeper in, skirting the crack and plunging between her legs from behind.

The Doctor's cock twitches below the cover of the book.

The dream's jagged edges collide, producing flashes of sensation rather than an easily visualised picture of events. The man's finger gliding wetly across Amy's clit, his increasingly solid hard-on against her thigh, lace prickling where his hand sweeps a circle over her breast. His face flickers, never in focus.

A pressure wave starts to build at Amy's centre. The Doctor clenches his fists, tries to concentrate on whether null-set alpha-sub-rho is functionally equivalent to a transcendental super-series of sigma elements on alternate Tuesdays.

Amy starts to moan, but it's a different sound than usual: not short gasps of pleasure, but still a sound steadily building in volume.

"Ah," she cries. " _Ahr._ Ro– ... _Rory._ " Then she's repeating his name, chanting it, calling out _where have you been? and you stupid face, come here, you stupid, stupid face._ Sharp-edged waves of regret and loss ripple through her, pour out of her in sudden tears that begin as a trickle and rapidly develop into a flood. A twinge shoots through the Doctor's elbow as Amy thrashes on her bed, and when her dream abruptly shuts down, the Doctor's on his feet and running to Amy's room.

"Amy?" he calls softly. "Amy, I thought ... I thought I heard something. Are you all right?"

There's a long pause until her door swings open wide enough for a sliver of her lanky body in a white cotton nightdress. Her face is blotchy and red, and she wipes away a tear.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Just a bad dream. Weird dream. Weird, bad dream."

"Do you want a cup of tea? Something to settle your nerves?"

"No, no, it's all right. Just ... Doctor, you ever have one of those dreams where you know it was important, like, really important, but you can't remember a thing about it when you wake up? All I remember is that I was home, I was ... in bed, and then I was crying, I couldn't stop crying. Like the saddest thing in the world had happened to me, and I don't remember any of it. How is that possible?"

"Sometimes a dream is just a dream, Amy. It may seem important at the time, it may even feel important, but it's not. It's simply your unconscious mind sorting out the day."

"Yeah, I suppose. I just wish I knew why it made me cry. And why it made me bang my elbow." She rubbed it, grimacing.

"Maybe you'll work it out in the morning. And if not – maybe it wasn't that important after all." _As unimportant as the dreams of old men._ "Now, why don't you try to go back to sleep?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I will. Thanks for checking up on me, Doctor."

He caresses her cheek, draws away her last tear with his thumb. "I'm always here for you, Pond. Good night."

Amy drifts away towards her bed.

The Doctor closes the door himself.


End file.
